


A Few Seconds' Pain

by notenoughtogivebread



Series: Glee Friendship Shorts [3]
Category: Glee
Genre: Body Image, Break Up, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 08:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4557576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenoughtogivebread/pseuds/notenoughtogivebread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has to come early to McKinley just to check. A moment during Naked between Blaine and Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Few Seconds' Pain

It was so early that only the door by the gym was open. Sam was glad that he had discovered that door sophomore year when he came early to shower at McKinley while they were living at the motel. He wasn’t coming to shower now, though. He just—had to check. He stripped quickly in the locker room lit only by the gray dawn light filtering through the high windows. Then he dug the calipers out, pinching his waist. The numbers LOOKED okay, but maybe he should go 20 minutes skipping rope just in case.

The room filled with the rhythmic tic of the rope. He was sweating soon, watching the clock as his legs became heavy and his heart rate increased. There were still a few minutes left on the timer when the lights came on around him. He stumbled for a second, then stopped.

Oh. Blaine’s curly, pre-gelled head poked around the corner of the locker.

“Hey, dude. Why are you here so early?”

“Hey, Sam. It’s Broga Day, right? Plus, I wanted to spend some time on the heavy bag.” He looked away, his mouth going tight with the questions he wasn’t asking.

“Damn. Broga…” The timer ran down and the alarm started to beep. He dropped the rope and ran over to silence it. He had to check again. As he stood in front of the mirror, pinching the fat he saw on his hips, he felt Blaine’s eyes on him.

He wasn’t too surprised when his friend spoke up. “You know what? Instead of the heavy bag, you wanna toss the medicine ball instead?”

This was how it went on bad days. Blaine came to hit something, anything, to see if a few seconds’ physical pain could take away whatever hurts he was holding under that head of curls. And Sam came to perfect the one thing under his control. He could take it if Blaine pushed the ball at him with a little too much force at first…

When his arms and core were screaming at him, Sam stopped. Blaine’s hair was dripping, a long curl falling into his eyes, and he was breathing hard. Sam dropped the ball and stood. He ruffled Blaine’s hair and dropped a towel on his friend’s shoulders. “You okay now, dude?”

“Yeah. Just—needed to clear my mind before Broga. Thanks. You’re the best.” And he headed to the shower to wash his hair and carefully gel it down before the other guys could see.

Sam wondered if what Blaine had to clear from his head had anything to do with that thing Artie learned from Tina—that Kurt was seeing some guy in New York. He looked over toward the shower and called out, “I think only Ryder and Joe are coming in today—you want me to clear the space?”

Blaine answered as he stepped out, already dressed in his undies, squeezing his hair dry. “We’ve got like another half-hour before they show.” He picked up the calipers and rope, held them out to Sam, and said, “I thought, maybe—Want to look over your precalc homework? You’re done with these, right?”

He looked up into Blaine’s worried eyes and pushed away the voice inside his head telling him to go just a little longer. “Yeah. I’ll go rinse off. Can you put these away?” He hoped that Blaine would hide the calipers and cover the mirrors, would put a lock and key between him and this shit about his body. But that wasn’t his friend’s way—any more than it was his to talk talk talk about Kurt and Blaine fucking up and Kurt. That was Tina’s job.

But whatever it was, he thought as he stood under a cooling shower, it worked. Just like somehow Blaine felt less sad about missing Kurt around Sam and could just BE, Sam could put his worries away when he and Blaine worked together or played together, could just DO the task in front of him and leave the future to itself. Maybe it was magic or something. He only knew that when he stepped into the tiny meeting room where they did yoga, shaking the water out of his hair, and saw Blaine sitting against the wall with his math books and freshly sharpened pencils, he felt more okay than he had for days.


End file.
